Endeavour

Space Shuttle Orbiter OV-105,
which made its first flight on May 7, 1992 (STS-49). The selection of
the Shuttle name Endeavour came from a national competition
involving elementary and secondary school students. Shuttle Endeavour's
milestones include the first flight of a replacement Shuttle (STS-49),
the rescue and redeployment of the Intelsat
VI-F3 communications satellite (STS-49), and the first servicing mission
to the Hubble Space Telescope (STS-61).
Endeavour completed its final mission, and the penultimate Shuttle mission
when it returned to Earth on June 1, 2011, having delivered the Alpha
Magnetic Spectrometer 2 to the International
Space Station.

Endeavour was built from spare parts from other shuttle orbiters. Following
the Challenger disaster,
Rockwell International offered to build two new space shuttles for the
price of one. Another option was to refit Enterprise,
but ultimately, the cheapest option proved to be using spare parts left
over from the construction of Challenger,
Discovery, and Atlantis,
to make the new orbiter.

Both spacecraft were named after the first ship captained by explorer James
Cook. Cook sailed Endeavour on her maiden voyage in August 1768 to
the South Pacific to observe and document the rare passage of the planet
Venus between Earth and the Sun. He later
took her on a voyage that resulted in the discovery of New Zealand, a survey
of the eastern coast of Australia, and the navigation of the Great Barrier
Reef. A second ship captained by Cook, Discovery, also inspired the
name of a Shuttle.